


you and i

by fated_addiction



Category: K-pop, Real Person Fiction, TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 22:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12309156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: Sana’s mouth is hot against her ear. “You should really kiss her,” she says.That time Sana gets involved. And Nayeon tries to stay in her own feelings. Sort of.





	you and i

**Author's Note:**

> Finishing some old prompts that I had lying around and by lying around, I mean that I'm hardcore avoiding my laundry and everything else that I have to do. Of course, I really love these two too... so there's that too.

Sana says, probably _warns_ , “I am going to tell everyone’s secrets if I drink that –” she even points to the offending bottle of vodka with a wave of her hand, pouting, “– and _then_ everyone is going to be mad at me and who is going to take responsibility, huh?”

The problem is pretty simple: Sana, typically more open than all of them, with her weird Sana-isms that, when you sort of think about them, seem more like wise, wise words than quirks. She’s an entirely different beast when she drinks, when they drink, and their stupid dorm in Japan is infinitely smaller than the one in Seoul. Promotions, their company still reasons. 

Nayeon is still the one that takes her seriously. Enough to make a beeline for the food and not the alcohol, watching with Jihyo as all the kids dissolve into giggles and games as they pass the cheap bottle of vodka around. It was from the corner store, Dahyun had claimed, but they all know that the duty-free shops are bigger, better, and dangerous secrets. One of them decided that their free day celebration was going to definitely start with a stupid decision.

“They’re going to regret this pretty hard in the morning,” Jihyo murmurs, next to her. She passes the takeout macaroni to her. Her voice is wistful and she leans over in her chair, rubbing her ankle. She finally looks at Nayeon too. “Not in the mood?”

Nayeon shakes her head. “I have a CF.” She shrugs when Jihyo pats her arm. “It’s fine,” she says. “It’s just a thing before I can have free time. Before things get too crazy, you know?”

“Things are already crazy,” Jihyo says dryly.

They both share a laugh, short lived though as Dahyun goes flying across the room from a chair, and Tzuyu and Chaeyoung dissolve into a weird pile of laughter, all limbs. Jihyo sighs and stands to go deal with the mess, leaving Nayeon to pick at the macaroni.

“You’re not going to break out,” Sana declares, appears out of nowhere to drop over her shoulder and nuzzle her neck. “Eat your food,” she says, then slurs, “Momo-chan is waiting for you to have an appetite!”

Nayeon tries to push her away gently. “Go drink water.”

“Good thing she likes cheese,” Sana says. Her nose wrinkles and she goes from Nayeon’s shoulder to her lap, draping herself all over her. “Momo-chan _loves_ cheese enough to want to kiss you. Even though she already wants to kiss you. Even though you already want to kiss you. But, you know, cheese?”

“I can’t kiss myself,” Nayeon snorts, and when she looks up Momo is staring right at them, her eyes wide and her expression unreadable. Earlier she was swaying with Jeongyeon to non-existent music.

Nayeon tries to ignore her expression. Or the way that it kind of curls into knots, deep in her belly. Because there’s that too. There is a lot of history, maybe, but Nayeon likens that to wistful thinking and maybe, well, an overactive imagination because that is all she has to survive.

“And,” she tries to say, “I don’t think Momo wants to kiss me.”

“Because _you_ think that,” Sana reasons, and then plants a giant, sloppy kiss on the side of her head. Her lips are wet and sticky and Nayeon squeals, her legs dropping from underneath Sana as they tumble hard to the ground.

Sana’s mouth is hot against her ear.

“You should really kiss her,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

So here’s the thing:

Nayeon has been in her feelings for a long time. It’s a problem. She knows. You don’t have to tell her. She could pinpoint the moment, the exact moment, where she knew that she was never going to stop having a thing for Momo, for the way these feelings make her panic around her. The world is hard enough anyway and these days everything moves fast enough to feel like her feelings are always going to be impossible.

But it’s not even just a thing anymore, it’s years of wanting to be close to one person, of panicking because it’s painful and hard and wonderful and selfish all at the same time. Sometimes she wonders if she’s even keeping a secret because the girls, who stand as her family now, all drop these large, massive hints that she’s not really good at hiding how she feels.

It’s just that they’ve never talked about it.

They might not. Ever.

 

 

 

 

 

The macaroni gets abandoned.

It’s not great anyway. The cheese isn’t right and it tastes like gummy bears, which means that Sana has been in it. Nayeon makes better macaroni anyway and she’s going to regret it hard in the morning when she wakes up bloated and annoyed. She leaves the drunken mess of girls alone in the living room space, disappearing to monopolize the bathroom before it’s too late.

She hears laughter echoing against the walls. Then she hears music and a crash, Jihyo shouting, then Mina apologizing, and someone has probably done something stupid like breaking a lamp. It’s still better noisy than quiet.

Nayeon manages to wash her face. Throws a bunch of cold water against her cheeks and neck. She forgets a headband and a few strands of hair are wet, struggling to stay behind her ear as she searches blindly for her face wash.

“Here.”

There is a bottle shoved into her hand, over the sink, and Momo appears over her in the mirror, guiding her fingers to wrap around it.

Nayeon can’t escape. She forgets breathing and the bottle slips into the sink with a clatter. She remembers Sana and that stupid, stupid comment, ignoring the fact that Momo has moved too close to her back. Her arm slips around her waist and she drops her chin to rest over Nayeon’s shoulder.

“I can’t wash my face this way,” Nayeon manages. There’s a lump tightening in her throat. Her teeth bite at her lip. “I’m glad you’re comfortable though.”

Momo shrugs. “I am.” Personal space seems irrelevant. “I like leaning against you,” she says. 

The tiny bathroom is tight enough as it is. Momo shows no signs of leaving and Nayeon does more than panic, she turns and tries to finish washing her face. The other girl laughs and it’s frustrating because the sound is soft enough to be warm, nice, and everything else that exists in between.

“What did Sana say?”

It was coming. Nayeon deflects. “Something about my macaroni and cheese,” she replies and reaches for a towel, struggling to half-carry Momo’s limbs too. It’s not really a lie anyway. “I couldn’t really pay attention. The vodka smell.”

“Yeah.” Momo wrinkles her nose too. “I could only try it. You know I like sweeter things anyway.”

“I know,” Nayeon replies. It’s instant. Gently, she reaches down to curl her fingers around Momo’s hands. They rest at her belly and Nayeon’s fingers are still wet from washing her face. “I have an early morning.”

“I know,” Momo echoes. “The CF.” She lets Nayeon turn in her arms. “You’re not going to be bloated in the morning either,” she says too. “So tell me, what did Sana say? She told me to ask you.”

The bathroom becomes even smaller this way, smaller when Nayeon feels her back press against the wall next to the door, _desperately_ small when Momo seems to tower over her and continue to refuse to let her go. Her heels shuffle back and she almost confesses right then, if only because it seems like the thing to do.

“Macaroni and cheese,” she quips, weakly though. She throws in a tooth grin and Momo smiles back at her because it’s sort of their thing anyway. “That’s all. Why do you keep asking me?”

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Momo laughs. “Neither is yours.” Her fingers sweep across Nayeon’s forehead and she’s suddenly close, maybe too close to her. Momo opens her mouth with a crooked grin. “We’re going to have to talk about it sooner or later. We can’t keep doing it this way either.” It feels a little more serious. “What Sana said,” Momo quips and Nayeon tries to remember breathing.

They stand this way for a while, or maybe it’s just long enough, long enough for Nayeon to try and cling to the rational part of her brain, the one that talks her out of doing stupid things in small space. She tries to smell some of the vodka that Momo said she had a sip of, force an overwhelming smell into existence, but can do nothing but smell the scent of her face wash and listen to the echo of the music hitting the door next to them.

“I need to go to sleep.”

It’s the sound of her own voice and Nayeon blinks to allow it to wash over herself. She touches Momo’s face, then her shoulder to push, only gently, because she doesn’t know what else to do other than that.

“I know,” Momo says and steps back, still smiling, maybe wistfully, maybe not. Her lips purse and she replaces Nayeon at the sink, leaning back against it. “I’ll see you after your filming.”

Momo doesn’t kiss her. Nayeon tries to lie to herself and ignore disappointment.

 

 

 

 

 

The truth?

Momo confessed first. Out loud, right in front of her. It was terrifying: in between shots for filming their debut video, she grabbed her by the hand and led her to somewhere behind the building. They were hidden by the broken school bus prop and the makeup trailer, sharing an oversized jacket because it’s _always_ cold in the earliest hours of the morning.

“I like you,” she had said, firmly enough so that it sounded like, “I _love_ you!” and was enough to send Nayeon into a furious spiral of confusion, her feelings surfacing only to hide again. “You don’t have to like me back,” she had said too, tucking Nayeon’s hair behind her ear and pressing her mouth to her forehead. “I’m okay with that, but I’m not okay with you not knowing.”

Nayeon had felt small and lost and disappointed in a way she didn’t understand. It was a weight that was sudden, nowhere near manageable and dangerous enough to pull at her sanity. She remembers it this way a lot: Her lips had been dry from the makeup and behind them, somewhere, they could hear the other girls laughing and moving around on the break. Momo hadn’t even relented space.

Confusion is a cruel monster, even worse than jealousy and denial. Nayeon remembers that day a lot, in smaller moment where it’s just her and her thoughts and the memory of the day that she really hadn’t given herself the opportunity to fall for someone else.

Falling in love is really, really hard.

 

 

 

 

 

By two, Nayeon knows she’s not sleeping. It’s fine. She usually falls asleep during makeup. But Sana and her words are literally _haunting_ her, mostly because she’s on the other side of the room and snoring like she’s a forty year old man.

“I can’t do this,” she mutters, and Nayeon kicks herself into sitting up, then taking the long walk to the room across the hall.

She’s quiet when she opens the door, ignoring Jeongyeon and Jihyo asleep in the bed by the door. Jeongyeon is drooling and she’s sure Jihyo’s heard her already, the only acknowledgment of her presence turning around in bed. She still makes her way to Momo, asleep by the window, curled on her stomach with sheets wrapped around her legs. “I get _hot_ at night,” she always defends herself, enough to the point where her face flames red and Nayeon takes upon herself to step between Momo and whoever is making fun of her.

This is dumb, she thinks. Then she climbs into the bed.

It’s not difficult to work her way around Momo. She’s the smaller of the two of them and feels like she’s spent more of her time trying to fight around her anyway. There’s no sudden movement when she settles and Momo turns slowly, a soft sigh buried into her pillow.

“I know you’re awake,” Nayeon says, whispers really because if she’s not, that’s fine too. Because she’s not going to be good at this. In fact, she’s surprised that she hasn’t panicked already.

It’s less than a minute before Momo responds, her eyes opening in the dark. There are fingers curling around Nayeon’s arm.

“You should be sleeping,” Momo admonishes. Her voice feels muffled.

Nayeon shakes her head. “I can’t.” Then, she sighs. “I need you to listen to me for a second. It’s not going to take me very long, I promise. Because you need to sleep too. I don’t want to be responsible for your dark circles,” she jokes, but she’s half-serious too. “Heechul oppa would never let me live it down.”

“He’s fine.” Momo snorts. “You get a pass with him.”

“Good to know,” Nayeon replies and swallows. She turns on her back and shifts under the blankets, draping her arms over her eyes. She feels the bed shift and Momo is close enough for her to feel her breathing. 

They lie in silence for what feels like forever. Maybe it’s for the courage. Nayeon tries to think about all the moments she wanted to say something. For her, the confession had come out of the blue. She isn’t good at any this; feelings are usually compounded by the facts, the kind that pulls at every rational part of her brain. You need to prove you can do, so work harder. You need to take care of your family, so say yes. So what if there are comments on the Internet? Just prove them wrong. And in between that, there are always the smaller moments, the ones where Momo buys her ice cream, or where she lets herself lean against her, or that time Momo stayed up with her just so that they could watch holiday fireworks. It’s the smaller moments where she feels the most selfish, where Nayeon complies them and understands just exactly how she feels about Momo.

“I have spent the better part of years,” she starts finally, her voice climbing a little higher than a whisper, “playing that moment where you confessed to me. Or told me. I’m pretty sure you don’t really do confessions.”

Momo stays quiet. The only acknowledgment that Nayeon gets is her fingers across her arm, tugging at her wrist to pull it away from her face.

“Give me a second,” Nayeon says. She swallows. “It’s hard enough doing this, knowing that you’ve been ahead of me all this time and everybody’s like you should probably go and catch up. It’s like they’re saying Momo’s going to find someone else. She loves you so why don’t you love _her_.”

The tears start. It’s literally the worst feeling – her eyes are burning and they close tightly, just as her arm drops from her face. She turns on her side to face Momo, mostly out of habit.

“I never said that I don’t like you.” Her mouth trembles. “And I hate that people think I don’t. I hate that so much.”

The confession unravels in a mess of tears, of grossly silent sobs, sobs that feel painfully heavy and become muffled by the pillow. She’s vaguely aware of Momo curling over her, almost on top of her, her mouth in her hair and her fingers curling against the back of her neck. Nayeon slides her legs between Momo’s and they literally wrap themselves around each other. It’s stupid and confusing and all Nayeon wants to do is kiss her and hate herself later.

“You know that,” she manages, peeking up at Momo. She’s irresponsibly close and Momo slides her fingers over her mouth. Nayeon tries again. “You know that, _right_?”

“Of course,” Momo says.

Her fingers cool against her face and all of the sudden, everything’s a little brighter in the room. Nayeon breathes. Then breathes again. And then once more because she’s about to do that stupid thing, the one where she leans over and kisses the other girl the way she wants to.

“I like you,” Nayeon says, confesses, and presses it into Momo’s mouth.

The other girl laughs. It’s a surprised sound. Nayeon’s mouth remains flat against hers, her eyes opened and waiting, clumsy because she doesn’t know how she wants to do this. There is no plan.

“Try again,” Momo murmurs against her mouth and it’s something so soft that Nayeon lets out a strangled sigh and just sort of relents.

She kisses her this way, _the_ way, the one that she’s imagined a million times in her head because it’s never going to be anything else. Momo’s fingers remain in her hair and all Nayeon does is open her mouth, breathing into Momo every stupid, senseless concern she’s ever had. The kiss is nowhere near soft; it happens suddenly and too quickly, pulling deeply at the heat in Nayeon’s belly. Her head is spinning and everything feels heavy, just as Momo slides her tongue into her mouth. Nayeon kisses with her teeth and Momo presses her hips closer, as if to reach her, pulling herself over Naeyeon. Around them, the sheets start to twist and they slowly roll into the wall and window. She tries to grab at Momo, but then it’s over and she’s breathless, desperate to reclaim some kind of air.

“I would have waited for you forever,” Momo says, and Nayeon snorts because it’s stupid and cheesy and maybe just perfect enough. Momo shrugs, unfazed. Her voice drops and she smiles shyly. “And I also could have loved you alone. I was okay with that too.”

“That’s so stupid,” Nayeon rolls her eyes. Inside, she’s a mess and delighted and sad and kicking herself all the same. She wraps her arms around her Momo’s waist and buries herself into the crook of her throat. “I guess that’s why we work. Or whatever. I really don’t understand you sometimes.”

Momo laughs, out loud, loud enough for Jeongyeon to stir and say, “seriously, thank _god_!” and then, “go to sleep though –” because everyone else apparently in this too. It wasn’t really a secret anyway.


End file.
